Wednesday, March 30, 2011

A little practice report

Did full primary and second up to pincha mayurasana this morning. Had to start practice earlier this morning (at 5:45 a.m.; I usually start around 6:30 or 6:45 a.m.), because I had a faculty meeting at 9 a.m., and I wanted to have enough time to shower and get some espresso at the coffee shop.

I tried my best to get through the practice as quickly as I could without sacrificing awareness, but the whole thing still took 2 hours and 15 minutes. It's probably because I didn't want to give up the 5-breaths-on-the-inhale, 5-breaths-on-the-exhale thing. I think you tend to stay longer in postures when you consciously make an effort to do this 5-on-the-inhales-and-exhales thing. But I highly recommend it: It does wonders for your ability to be present in the posture. And it's especially hard to do in a posture like navasana (need I say more?). In fact, in navasana today, I was so spaced out from doing the 5-breaths-on-the-inhales-and-exhales thing that when I got to what I thought was the fifth navasana, I couldn't be sure that it was really the fifth or if it was only the fourth (after all, one navasana feels pretty much like the other after the first one). So I did another one for good measure; which means I probably did 6 navasanas. Gosh, were my quads burning...

But all this is probably just as well. I'm heading out to Kino's workshop in Richmond this weekend, and the first session (Friday evening) is led primary. And Kino has famously inherited Guruji's habit of counting out navasana really... really... slowly...

Kapo this morning was very nice and deep. The rest of second also went nicely; Pincha felt strong, steady, and bandhaful.

And of course, if you do have questions that you are burning to ask Kino, email me at siegfried23 at hotmail dot com. In particular, I 'm going to focus my interview with her this time on how the yamas and niyamas apply to the practice, and how the practice helps us in observing them better. So in particular, if you have questions in this area, please get in touch with me.

Back to work now. It's amazing how much I have to get done between now and tomorrow night, when I fly out.

Greetings!

Welcome to Yoga in the Dragon's Den. I am very happy that you take the time to visit and read my posts. I will be even more happy if you comment on my posts :-) I love comments: I think they are a wonderful way for me to engage in conversation with you. If you do not feel comfortable commenting, and would rather get in touch with me personally, you can also email me at siegfried23 at hotmail dot com

Namaste, and May the Force be with You.

Your Friendly Cyber-hood AshtangiNobel

Named One of 30 Transecendent Sites for Stress Reduction

Named Top 100 Yoga Blogs 2012 by the Institute for the Psychology of Eating

Who Am I?

It's so hard to describe yourself without putting yourself into boxes or categories, but I'll try. At present, I practice ashtanga yoga, teach philosophy at a university, and try my best to make as much sense as possible of my life and things around me, in pursuit of the answer to life's mysteries: big, small, and everything in between. What if there are no answers? Well, then maybe the fun is in the searching...